Saturday, March 29, 2008

Dangit, I missed most of Earth Hour cuz I was having dinner with some friends. =( It's basically a movement that for one hour, everybody turns off their lights to reduce power consumption and raise awareness of the burden we're putting on the environment.

I'm sad I missed it. Gonna turn off my lights for the last bit of it, though. =(

Monday, March 24, 2008

I tried exporting my Google Docs resume as a PDF because I figured that was pretty platform neutral. The resulting document looked nothing like the original. So I tried exporting it as a Microsoft Word Document. The resulting file crashes Microsoft WordPad. I then tried exporting it as a Rich Text Document and the resulting document again looked nothing like the original.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the export formatting problems have to do with the use of tables.

Anyways, I guess I can just export it as HTML since that works flawlessly. It damn well better since that's what it uses to display in the browser. Beware if you're planning on using Google Docs to work with any of the other formats and you plan on using tables.

Today, I tried importing my resume from Microsoft Word into Google Docs to update it (and to avoid having to install Microsoft Word). I was impressed by how well it worked. All the tables and formatting looked about right except for the position of one small table. My disappointment only began when I tried editing it.

I first tried to add a new entry in the work experience section for my most recent job at The Collective Studios. The editor continually had issues attempting to figure out what text belonged in which bulleted list and the spacing was totally unmanageable (perhaps for the same reason). I verified over and over that the spacing was all set to single space and the text was all the same size, but I had to end up re-entering text a few times to get the spacing to be consistent.

Then I tried to fix the little table. It was utterly impossible to move it. I ended up just remaking a new version of the same table so I had better control over it.

All in all, the Google Docs editor works amazingly well, but it still can't quite compete with good old fashioned word processors like Microsoft Word.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Last night, I remember one segment of my dreams where I had to try to memorize the answers to some sort of like fill in the blank type questions and answer them in front of a group of people. However, the fill in the blank type questions were in a language I didn't understand. It felt like Japanese (written with English characters though).

I tried and tried but couldn't remember them because they were basically gibberish to me. Then when it came time for me to answer them in front of the people, I couldn't do it. I woke up at that point and was like sweating.

I wonder if that dream was some sort of manifestation of my doubts about my ability to succeed.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Today, Barack Obama delivered one of the most amazing speeches of recent years. I highly recommend listening to it or watching it. He does an awesome job of boiling down why there are still racial tensions in our country and asks us to try to find common ground to move forward. If everyone in the country would listen to this speech and think about what it meant, there would be a lot more progress in general. The people of our country really do need to unite to move forward.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Battlegroup 9 has some strong teams on many servers, but one way to gauge the overall strength of each server is to look at the overall ranking of the 20th strongest 5v5 team on each server. The numbers you see are pretty good at telling the story of the overall skill of that server.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I fully understand why there is a need to have allergy warning information on food. For example, plain chocolate M&Ms can potentially have small amounts of peanut in them because they are from the same plant as peanut M&Ms. For people with the severe allergy to peanuts, this can be a life saver.

However, sometimes the warnings turn out to be just plain silly. For example, I purchased a package of "Chipotle Oven Roasted Peanuts" and the label, as required by law, warns: "Allergy Information: This product is processed on equipment that also processes other tree nuts or peanuts. May contain tree nuts or peanuts." I certainly hope the peanuts are processed on equipment that processes peanuts. And I certainly hope it contains peanuts.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

I don't tend to remember my dreams very often nowadays. Usually I only remember them if they made a strong enough impression on me that I thought about it a little bit after I woke up.

Last night, I had a weird one not long before I woke up where I had to have surgery for some reason in which the result was that they had to clean the filter in my esophagus. Even in my dream, I thought it was odd that there was a filter in my esophagus at all but the surgeon was quick to explain that it was perfectly normal and being in a dream, I accepted it. Anyways, then the rest of that dream was me recovering from this surgery with a kind of weird recurring pain in my chest area and explaining to people I had had surgery done.

I'm not exactly sure why this dream made a strong enough impression on me that I remembered it. I'm suspicious that it had to do with how miserable I've felt since yesterday when my Spring allergies started up. Ah well.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Apparently over 8 million people have seen this clip before I did, but here's a video clip of two cats being utterly cute and acting like they're conversing. I think I'm going to have to get a cat or two when my roommate moves out and takes Embo with her.

Monday, March 3, 2008

This version of Tetris has some "Grand Master" mode that is pretty brutal. This guy, however, demolishes it. He even survives through the invisible phase. That's just so insane. I'd love to see what this guy could do in versus mode Tetris games.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

This person decided to try removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strip to see what would happen. The results are somewhat disturbing in some ways. To quote the site: "Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb."

This reminds me of The Nietzsche Family Circus in terms of how much it changes the feel of the comic strip with a simple alteration. The Nietzsche Family Circus has generated some pretty profound ones when I've experimented with it.